Middle age is where dreams go to die.
My thirties have been a coming-to-terms with the fact that I will probably never be a professional soccer player or clarinetist. It’s too late. Once time’s waves have crashed on the shore, there’s no getting them back.
All who live live long enough to see the death of a dream. When it happens, we might ask, Were those wrong dreams? Is it wrong to dream at all?
Two iconic mid-century works wrestle with the disillusionment of unfulfilled dreams: Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Old Man and The Sea (1952). Published just three years apart, the main characters of these stories, the salesman Willy Loman and the old man Santiago, have a lot in common.
Both the salesman and the old man have worked hard all their lives. Both have little to show for a lifetime of hardship. Both are chewed up and spit out by industry. Both go a bit nutty. Both ignore reality, clinging to the glories of the past as a defense against a tragic future.
And both are seduced by a glamorized version of the American Dream.
The old man idolizes the Great DiMaggio; the salesman philanders with The Woman. These two figures symbolize an unrealistic—frivolous even!—ideal, a picture of the good life packaged and shipped and delivered to the doorstep of every American Joe.
At his graveside, Willy’s son Biff regrets, “He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.” Willy Loman’s passion was to prove to others: I am enough! Similarly, the old man Santiago was on a lifelong quest of ever-increasing challenges to prove to himself: I am enough!
When hard work and indefatigable optimism fall short, and our dreams are the bleached ribs of a giant fish carcass, what are we to do? Perhaps we should take Biff’s advice: “Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?”
But we don’t have to dissolve into bitter pessimism. We are not wrong to be blue-eyed optimists in the face of unpredictable seas. The problem is that we are looking to ourselves, to others, to our upbringing, to our money, our education, our industry, or a host of other things to make our dreams come true. But they will all fall short.
Because, in every sale we fail to make and every catch-less day at sea, we are learning a gracious truth: You are not enough.
The death of a dream is not another encouragement to give up hope; it is the gentle prodding of the waves—“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:11).
On that topic, there is an item that will make all of your baking dreams come true. It keeps things from sticking to pans or getting too dark on the bottom and makes clean-up a breeze. I’m speaking, of course, about . . .
Dreamy Parchment Paper.
Our family has been using these baking sheets for a couple of years (I get no kick-backs for recommending this product, but I probably should!). They fit a half-sheet pan perfectly.
Here’s a tip: If you make pizza on a pizza stone like I do, make your pizza on the pizza peel with this parchment underneath. Then, when you go to slide the pizza into the oven and onto the pizza stone, there is no danger of the dough sticking to the peel and the toppings going flying off the pie and into the bottom as an offering to the oven gods.